The NRA is not alone in attempting to prevent effective regulation of guns and promoting reckless policies that leave Americans vulnerable to crime. Its efforts are supported by the same kind of coalition that undermines the nation’s ability to solve a wide range of problems. Corporations, right-wing ideologues, and Religious Right leaders work together to misinform Americans, generate unfounded fears, and prevent passage of broadly supported solutions.

Yesterday, Vic Eliason of Voice of Christian Youth America interviewed Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly about Chuck Hagel, who is set to be confirmed as secretary of defense later today. Adding to the other ridiculous, last-ditch efforts to sink Hagel’s nomination, Eliason asked Schlafly about wild allegations “that Mr. Hagel has become or has been a part of Islam, he’s Islamic.” Rather than specifically address Eliason’s question, Schlafly said that since Obama “gives a pass to Islam” in “his attack on religion,” Americans “have to be on guard on that all the time.”

Eliason: Phyllis, there have been those that allege that Mr. Hagel has become or has been a part of Islam, he’s Islamic. What substance is on this thing?

Schlafly: Hagel is the most dangerous appointee for secretary of defense we’ve ever had, he’s got so many things wrong with him. He’s for getting rid of our nuclear weapons, he’s for downplaying our anti-missile defense and he’s even for signing onto the Law of the Sea Treaty, which would give some more foreign people the opportunity to make decisions about our policies. Whereas we know the whole world is better off if we have military superiority. Well, when we talk about Obama and his attack on religion he gives a pass to Islam. So, we have to be on guard on that all the time.

Eliason: Well our good friend Jerry Corsi from over at WND had an interesting statement here, of course he refers to Mr. Hagel: ‘A former Nobel Peace Prize nominee warns that Senate confirmation of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense would send a message to Iran of weakened U.S. resolve, making it less likely America’s military might would in any way deter Iran’s nuclear ambitions.’

Schlafly: Well Jerry Corsi is very reliable and I would take his words very seriously, that’s absolutely true. I think it so dangerous to have Hagel as secretary of defense, who is trying to implement all of the pacifist ideas that Obama has.

She also agreed with a caller who claimed that officials like Hagel need to identify President Obama as “the enemy” of America.

Later, Schlafly compared the American policy of Cold War deterrence to the current policy for “dealing with the Islam,” while noting that “the Muslims are different” than the Soviets as “they seem to like to commit suicide.”

Schlafly’s classification of all Muslims as terrorists was part of a bizarre argument that criticized Hagel for supposedly seeking to do away with America’s nuclear arsenal that she claims we need to scare terrorists who also are not at all afraid of our nuclear weapons.

Schlafly: I want to point out one difference between dealing with the Communists and dealing with the Islam. When the Communists in Russia were in charge we had a policy called mutually assured destruction which we called MAD and it was that they knew that if they dropped a bomb on New York City we’d hit back and wipe them out and that was supposed to deter them from doing any bad attack. But the Muslims are different; they seem to like to commit suicide. I don’t think they are going to be deterred by that type of an attitude and we have to make sure that we have the weapons that are enough to scare them that they never attack in the first place.

WorldNetDaily’s Joseph Farah has a new project: erecting billboards listing the Ten Commandments in major American cities. So far, he just has a handful of billboards up in Las Vegas, but he’s hoping that eventually he will be able to fund “hundreds of thousands” of them across the country. Farah joined Janet Mefferd yesterday to talk about the campaign, telling her that our economic troubles are “just a symptom, frankly, of a moral problem,” namely that the national debt violates the biblical commandments against covetousness and stealing.

Farah might be interested to learn that the United States has held a public debt for all but one year of its history, meaning that by his own definition even his beloved Founding Fathers and Honorary Founding Father Ronald Reagan were complicit in violating the Ten Commandments.

Mefferd: What concerns you most about our country right now, what do you think is the greatest, you know, sin, greatest moral failure in our country that most needs this reminder that God has issued us these Ten Commandments?

Farah: Well, you know, I think if you ask most people what the biggest problem we face, it’s in our economy, is being devastated. But I think that’s just a symptom, frankly, of a moral problem at the very basis of that. You know, when you decide, for instance, as a nation, that you’re going to spend your grandchildren’s money and their great-great-grandchildren’s money racking up debt that, you know, people will be paying off for generations, that is covetousness, that’s stealing. How many commandments are we breaking right there?

Mefferd: That’s right.

Farah: And, you know, again, I’m not trying to make this a materialistic thing, but what I’m saying is, it all ties in together. When you turn away from God…you know what, God gives us the desires of our heart. And when we decide we don’t want any part of God, he allows us to make that decision and live with the consequences. And I believe that’s what we’re, what’s happening to America right now, we’re spiraling down and we’re, you know, we’re not the nation we used to be. And unless we turn around and we follow that 2 Chronicles 7:14 prescription, we’re going to continue in that direction.

WASHINGTON – In a 93-0 vote today, the Senate confirmed Robert Bacharach of Oklahoma to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, almost nine months after the Judiciary Committee first sent his nomination to the full Senate. His nomination faced extraordinary delays despite public support from his homestate Republican senators James Inhofe and Tom Coburn.

People For the American Way Executive Vice President Marge Baker released the following statement:

“Robert Bacharach’s confirmation to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals is good news for residents of Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Utah, who will now see their justice system move a little more smoothly. Circuit courts have a tremendous influence on Americans’ pursuit of justice and the shape of American law, since the only higher court – the Supreme Court – hears so few cases. But the extraordinary delay in confirming Bacharach is a stark symbol of the dysfunction that Senate Republicans have brought to the judicial confirmations process.

“When President Obama nominated Bacharach in January 2012, his nomination was greeted enthusiastically by Sens. Inhofe and Coburn. In June, his nomination passed smoothly through the Judiciary Committee, where it was approved with broad bipartisan support. Then, Senate Republicans proceeded to stall his nomination on the Senate floor for no apparent reason. At the end of July, Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to hold a vote on Bacharach’s nomination, but was met with a purposeless GOP filibuster. Sen. Coburn had said such sabotage of his state’s nominee would be ‘stupid,’ but he and Sen. Inhofe ended up cooperating with their party’s leadership and refusing to help break the filibuster.

“I hope that today’s long-overdue confirmation of Bacharach signals a new willingness from the Senate GOP to work to quickly consider and vote on the president’s nominees. They have a lot of work to do. Three additional federal circuit court judges are awaiting votes from the full Senate: Caitlin Halligan, President Obama’s nominee to fill one of four vacancies on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, who was first approved by the Judiciary Committee in 2011; Third Circuit nominee Patty Shwartz, who has been on the Senate calendar for a year; and Federal Circuit nominee Richard Taranto, who has waited 11 months for a Senate vote.

“Last term, President Obama’s confirmed federal judicial nominees waited an average of three times as long between committee approval and confirmation as did President Bush’s first-term nominees. As the nation suffers the consequences of a federal courts vacancy crisis that it the Senate GOP has helped to perpetuate, Republicans can and must do better.”

Save California’s Randy Thomason on Friday appeared on Istook Live, the Heritage Foundation radio program hosted by former Republican congressman Ernest Istook, to discuss the Supreme Court case on Proposition 8.

He accused the California state officials who refused to defend Prop 8 of “dissing God” and went on to warn that “usurpers of the United States Constitution” have methodically and stealthily “infiltrated” the government and the courts in order to launch another civil war.

This not the characteristic of a Republic when there are sworn public servants, they have raised their right hand and they have pledged to defend the state constitution, to do their duty, to implement the law, they have made a public pledge before God and now they are dissing God, they are dissing the United States and the state constitutions and the people who elected them. An uninformed public that allows this to happen is just as bad when they vote foolishly or they vote wickedly. We have evidence abounding that there is a civil war occurring in the United States of America, it’s not being done with guns or knives, but it’s being done by usurpers of the United States Constitution and they have positioned themselves in power, they have infiltrated the constitutional land of the United States, they have gotten there with the help of ignorant people or wicked people and then they have implemented their own will.

Thomasson later said that President Obama is using lies and deception to bring about gay rights laws.

He has finally in an election year, last year, decided that he needed money from wealthy homosexual businesspersons and their supporters and he came out with the truth. He really is a supporter of everything homosexual, bisexual, transsexual; he has imposed it on the military, he’s imposing it on marriage, he’s imposing it on our culture.

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There are professional liars and there are professional double-talkers, and I’m not sure what you have here but you do have someone that is giving multiple messages. He already gave his message, he gave his message last year, in an interview he said that he supports homosexual marriages being legal, and that means everywhere. So it doesn’t matter what he says now. I guess he is working on a legacy; well the legacy is that America is really going down, down. Not simply because of foolish voters who don’t check out the real policies or real positions of the candidates or don’t even check out what’s best for children, but they listen to the lies and the myths and statements of candidates themselves and they just vote on image or they vote on feeling. That’s really self-idolatry.

Rios praised one email from “Margaret,” who wrote that “basic skills” like reading and writing are being “pushed aside in favor of teaching moral choices and left-wing agenda. It is no wonder American students have fallen so far behind other nations.” Margaret lamented that schools “rob the innocence of children through forced instruction of alternate lifestyles,” adding: “When two percent of America’s population seeks to dictate to the rest of us how our children should be educated, we have truly sunk into a pit of moral decay.”

Rios concurred and claimed that schools are “teaching radical environmentalism or homosexuality” now “instead of math and science,” which she explained is “the reason our test scores are so shockingly low compared with the world.”

It’s sad; it’s just amazing how they are throwing—whether they are teaching radical environmentalism or homosexuality. Can you imagine that they are teaching this instead of math and science? And they are. And Margaret’s right, that’s the reason our test scores are so shockingly low compared with the world.

According to Rios, it all goes back to a plan of Bill Ayers to “radicalize” teachers and the National Education Association’s goal of “promoting homosexuality in every discipline in public schools.”

The radicals of the ’60s, the college radicals of the ’60s, they were rebelling in the streets against everything, really. Some of them were ‘make love not war’ marijuana drones but some were really smart radicals. Because they did not win the battle in the ’60s they focused their sights on education. Look at Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, that is what they all did, they went into education and they populate our universities, they saturate them and they train teachers. Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground is one of the leading educators in the country, he’s a terrorist, it’s just amazing that he writes books and people read them, and that’s how the educators have become radicalized.

The National Education Association was led by a gay man for over twenty years who was not out until he stepped down and they started promoting, radically promoting, homosexuality. This started a long, long time ago, they started with a film called ‘It’s Elementary,’ I remember when that came out; it was a total propaganda piece for homosexuality. Gradually the National Education Association made this one of their largest concerns, was promoting homosexuality in every discipline in public schools, so that’s how it started.

Pratt predicted that President Obama may begin confiscating guns in order to provoke a violent response to justify further oppression, which host Stan Solomon feared would lead to the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of people.

Pratt once again insisted that Obama is acting like King George III, a sentiment with which Solomon concurred, saying, “That will happen quickly and they will wipe those people out to set an example.”

But Solomon wasn’t finished: “I believe they will put together a racial force to go against an opposite race resistance, basically a black force to go against a white resistance, and then they will claim anyone resisting the black force they are doing it because they are racist.”

Howard agreed: “You may be right because he has been sowing the seeds of racial hatred; we were healing quite well as a nation on racial issues until Obama came along and now we have a lot of racial discord.”

After arguing that Obama is “not American” and not a natural born citizen, Howard maintained that Obama may begin “wiping out a few hundred people who own guns, pull a large scale Waco or a Ruby Ridge type incident” and have it “tinged it with racial overtones.” But just in case Obama goes through with his plans to “take down” the Internet, “people are setting up phone-trees all over the place” to stop Obama in his tracks.

“If Obama can take your guns away he can take your car, he can take your home, he can take your bank account, he can take your very life,” Howard said.

Unsurprisingly, Pratt agreed with their insane ramblings: “I do agree that the Obama administration would definitely be capable of something as evil as you were suggesting.”

However, Pratt warned that “a lot of people resolved, ‘no more free Wacos,’” and that if Obama “starts playing the massacre game the way you did at Waco, well, you’re going to get surrounded, you won’t be able to go home safely, your family won’t be safe.”

Today in his column for WorldNetDaily, Keyes claims that if the government repeals laws discriminating against gays and lesbians then it will have to remove laws against rape, incest and pedophilia as well.

Today the elitist faction promoters of so-called “homosexual rights” use and abuse the language of rights even though they reject the logic that, in light of America’s political heritage, invests that language with moral force. By that logic every claim of unalienable right (i.e., a right that trumps the provisions of merely human law) can be tested with a simple question: What is the provision of the “laws of nature and of nature’s God” that obliges and authorizes the action or activity the claim involves? The pursuit of pleasure, sexual or otherwise, does not in and of itself correspond to such an imperative (even though, thanks to the goodwill of the Creator, most bodily activities required for our survival, are in some degree pleasurable.) Loving human relations are of course an imperative of our nature. But loving human relations need not involve the particular physical pleasures connected with what we call “sexual relations.” If by natural necessity they must, then the prejudicial prohibitions against incest or pedophilia would be as much a violation of right as those that target homosexual relations.

Absent any God-endowed natural imperative to engage in homosexual relations, doing so is a matter of choice involving a preference for one form of sensual gratification over another. It’s absurd to suggest that government should by law, force others to approve of and accommodate such preferences, especially when doing so requires trampling on proven claims of unalienable right, like the right freely to exercise (put into practice) one’s religion. We may justly penalize the neglect of right that permits some to feast while others are denied the opportunity to glean bare subsistence from their leftovers. But it makes no sense to say that because some people want to eat pork others are forbidden to disapprove of doing so, and that the latter are required to prepare and serve it whenever pork eaters demand that they do so.

Moreover, unless we mean to repeal the laws against rape, no one can by law be forced to respect or cater to the sexual appetites of others. Even temple prostitutes could discriminate against those who desecrated the idols they served. Shall we then submit to laws that require that we violate our obligation to the Author of our nature, the very authority from which our whole people derives its right of self-government, and from which our Constitution and laws derive their claim to our allegiance and respect? As the famous American patriot said, on the eve of the war occasioned by a less egregious travesty of right, “Forbid it, Almighty God.”

This piece is the fourth in a series of guest blog posts on “Why It’s Time to Dump DOMA.” In the weeks leading up to the Supreme Court arguments on the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act, we’re asking friends of PFAW to share why dumping DOMA matters to them. Be sure to check back soon for the latest post in the series.

Attending weddings is always an interesting phenomenon for queer Americans. We might celebrate in the festivities, box out our cousins for the bouquet or present a toast. Yet, for most queer people, myself included, there remains the thought in the back of our minds that -- try as we might -- a federally-recognized marriage is largely beyond our grasp. While I’m not sure when or if I’ll ever try to marry, I am committed to ensuring that American society treats all partnerships as equally valid under the law. Under the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 (DOMA), the federal government denies married same-sex couples every one of the 1,000+ federal legal protections that marriage affords and institutionalizes a negative stigma of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) people. For these reasons alone, DOMA is antithetical to a “free” America where all citizens are seen as equal under the law.

DOMA’s effects extend even further, however. For instance, the repeal of DOMA is also an issue of economic justice. Because DOMA prevents queer couples from filing their taxes together and sharing health benefits, these couples often pay more than heterosexual couples for the same services and opportunities. DOMA not only prevents same-sex couples from taking on the full benefits and responsibilities of marriage, it penalizes them financially.

The question of whether to “Dump DOMA” is clear for me. As more and more Americans favor marriage equality and as courts reject its reasoning, it’s only a matter of time before all Americans are afforded equal marriage rights under the law. I believe the “arc of history bends towards justice,” and I believe this is a time for all Americans to stand with their queer family, friends, and community members against injustice. DUMP DOMA TODAY!

Erik Lampmann, University of Richmond
Member of affiliate People For the American Way Foundation’s Young People For Program

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is to be honored by a far-right group whose leader has a history of comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler and attacking gays and lesbians.

Abbot is to receive an honor from two local affiliates of the U.S. Pastor’s Council, the Texas Pastor Council and the Houston Area Pastor Council. It’s unclear to what extent the groups are “groups”: all three share a website and are led by a single man, extremist pastor Dave Welch.

The groups are also planning to honor Paul Pressler, who helped lead the “conservative resurgence” within the Southern Baptist Convention. Former Clinton inquisitor Ken Starr, who now works for Baylor University, is delivering the keynote address.

Likened pastors who vouch for Obama’s Christian faith to Nazis and asserted that “Obama’s anti-Christian, anti-life, anti-marriage, anti-constitutional and anti-American policies” prove he only seeks to “use the church in the same way as a previous leader on a different continent,” Hitler.

Claimed the judge who ruled that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is unconstitutional is a treasonous “domestic enemy.”

Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) president Michael Farris, who last year warned that children who wear glasses may be placed under the control of the United Nations, is now wondering if President Obama will ban homeschooling with an executive order.

Farris yesterday spoke to Jim Schneider of VCY America on Crosstalk about the legal dispute between his HSLDA and the Justice Department in the case of German citizen Uwe Romeike. Romeike is seeking asylum in the U.S. in order to homeschool his children as it is banned in Germany.

HSLDA claims that the German government is suppressing a particular social group — homeschoolers — while the DOJ argues against granting asylum because the country’s law is neither “selectively enforced” nor “metes out disproportionate punishment” against people of a particular religion.

Farris asserts that the Justice Department’s stance in the case is proof that President Obama may soon issue an executive order banning homeschooling.

Schneider: No doubt there are some saying: ‘Well this is just a family from Germany who is applying for asylum and we really don’t need to worry about it after all, how does this impact me? Why does this matter? How can this impact the homeschooling freedom that we have right here in the United States?

Farris: It can because of the precedent that any case like this can set and it also reveals the heart and intention of our current administration. Their belief is anti-individual liberty on a very broad basis and their group think is at a deep and dangerous level. That repudiation of individual liberty should shock every American. Secondly, for homeschooling itself specifically, you know we’ve seen executive orders on lots of different subjects and so if President Obama gets it in his head that he is going to issue an executive order to ban homeschooling, you know, I wouldn’t put it pass that administration to try something like that especially as they get closer to the end of this four year term. They are capable of anything, who knows?

The Judicial Watch founder is threatening to sue activists who are collecting petitions to recall the Maricopa County, Arizona sheriff. In a video posted by Arizona Nightly News, Klayman ironically calls Arpaio opponents “vigilantes” who seek to “harass” the sheriff and distorts state election law to claim that the recall attempt is illegal.

Ted Nugent, who last year wondered “if it would have been best if the South had one the Civil War,” now claims that he is defending African Americans against their real enemy: President Obama. Nugent, who has described Obama voters as “subhuman varmint[s]” and “pimps whores & welfare brats” and criticized civil rights activists for “lisping their ebonic mumbo-jumbo,” is out with a new WorldNetDailycolumn which argues that Obama and his Democratic allies “have raped and plundered black America.”

Nugent maintains that Obama, whom he has threatened to kill and accused of having a “racist agenda,” “is the clear and present engineer of the destruction of black America” and that “the Democratic Party has been the engineer of the destruction of black Americans.”

Barack Obama, the guy who received roughly 93 percent of black American votes, is the clear and present engineer of the destruction of black America.

It’s not all the president’s fault, but the economic and social policies he endorses are destroying what is left of a once proud and strong black America.

As a MotorCity Motown guy whose gravity-defying career pivots on my intense adulation for my black musical heroes, it pains me deeply to witness this self-inflicted destructo derby. The destruction of blacks has been engineered by President Obama’s party for at least the last 50 years. The New Deal was a raw deal, and The Great Society experiment didn’t turn out to be so great after all. It has been an unmitigated disaster for black Americans.

…

With all this unbelievable negative information, what is more unbelievable is that black Americans continue to support Democratic politicians who have raped and plundered black America forever.

It was a damnable lie when Vice President Biden stated at a campaign rally attended by many black Americans last fall that if the country elected Republicans they would “put y’all back in chains.” What a disgrace and clown Vice President Biden is. He’s a national embarrassment.

The truth is that the Democratic Party has been the engineer of the destruction of black Americans, and everyone knows it except the very people who need to know it the most – black Americans.

The turbo-destruction will continue for black Americans until they realize that dirty Democrat politicians are their true enemy, not their salvation. Fortunately, some are beginning to embrace this self-evident truth.

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Regrettably, the study of modern-day black history by future historians will not be bright or rich. I predict the fundamental blame for this will be laid at the feet of the Democratic Party.

There is no doubt that my 2013 tour will be the best of my life. With world-class virtuosos paying tribute to our black heroes nightly, it is only fitting that this year’s tour is aptly titled, “Ted Nugent Black Power 2013.” Say it loud: my music is black and I’m proud!

Federally funded private school voucher and tax credit programs are more numerous than ever. Moreover, studies show that the curricula in many of these programs have included the teaching of creationism.

Yesterday, we reported on how Accuracy In Media’s Cliff Kincaid and Rick Wiles of TruNews believe that President Obama is supporting a global Islamist movement and should be arrested.

But that’s not all.

According to Wiles, people are having strange dreams where people eat a “fake manna” that represents “Lucifer trying to replicate what God did and feeding his people,” leading to a new demonic “spiritual transformation.”

Kincaid linked those dreams back to… Al Jazeera’s purchase of Current TV, which he claims proves that Al Gore is pushing a demonic Islamist force into America.

One of my columns about this was titled, ‘Al Gore, the Future and the Global Jihad.’ Whatever he is doing, he is certainly opening us up to domination by this global force, whether it’s spiritual or not or whether it’s demonic, that the international Islamic movement is part of it, clearly he is working with them but it could be even worse than that.

He argued that Al Jazeera should not even be allowed to broadcast in the U.S. because it is a “terrorist entity” that “is not protected by our First Amendment.” He even urged Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) to investigate the “treasonous” acquisition.

Al Jazeera is not protected by our First Amendment because it is a terrorist entity. It is the voice of the Muslim Brotherhood, which of course spawned Al Qaeda and Hamas, among other terrorist groups. It is the voice of Al Qaeda to this day. It was the voice of Osama bin Laden who was responsible for nearly 3,000 dead on 9/11. So this is a terrorist entity and under our law you cannot engage in criminal activity involving terrorism. So we have written to Congressman Michael McCaul of Texas who is the new chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee saying let’s have a hearing into this, let’s stop this deal, at least get all the facts out on the table because we believe this deal is illegal.

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It’s not just dirty oil money it’s blood money because this is the terror channel, this is the Al Qaeda network. I’ve told people repeatedly that this would be the equivalent during World War II of inviting the German and Japanese fascists onto American soil and giving them access to American broadcast facilities so they could undermine the war effort. Remember if you will going back in time that Axis Sally and Tokyo Rose who were American propagandists for the enemy were picked up after the war and convicted and sentenced to prison for treason. By the same token, I think this deal is treasonous and it has to be stopped but we’ve got to get the Congress of their butts.